David Cameron trying to 'muffle' voice of the North East with boundary review, it was claimed

The Conservatives want to reduce the number of seats in the House of Commons by 50 and the North East could lose three

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Prime Minister David Cameron speaks outside 10 Downing Street

The Conservatives are attempting to “muffle” the voice of the North East in parliament, it is claimed, as a shake-up of boundaries could leave the region with three fewer MPs.

David Cameron’s Tories want to redraw the dividing lines of the UK’s parliamentary constituencies and cut the number of MPs by 10% from 650 to 600.

The say it will save money and make the system fairer but now stand accused of trying to “gerrymander” votes by the region’s Labour MPs, who fear their party could be locked out of power in 2020 because of the move.

The proposal was first put forward in 2013. It came after a review by the Boundary Commission, which found there should be three fewer constituencies in the region - one from Tyneside, County Durham and Teesside.

But the Lib Dems blocked the move after being forced to abandon the House of Lords reform they had campaigned on.

Boundary reform was in the 2015 Conservative Manifesto, however, and the Prime Minister is reportedly ready to defy his backbench MPs, whose own constituencies will be placed under the microscope.

The current boundaries are said to favour Labour because the party tends to do better in urban seats tend be smaller - Newcastle, for example is split into three constituencies - than the suburban seats where the Tories pick up more votes, like the relatively large Hexham constituency.

But Labour say the reduction comes after a switch from household to individual voter registration in December 2014, which saw a million people drop off the electoral roll nationally, and any review must be started afresh.

Helen Goodman, Labour MP for Bishop Auckland, said: “This is a clear attempt by the Tories to gerrymander the constituencies on the basis of an electoral register from which they deliberately excluded seven million people by implementing individual voter registration.

“It is my contention that the Tories made that change in order to reduce the number of people on the register, just like the Republicans did in America.

“The people that have gone from the register are those in insecure housing, those on low incomes and young people.

“I think everybody knows that the voice of the North East was not heard by the Tory-led Government over the last five years, and this is a further attempt to muffle it.”

Newcastle City Council Leader Nick Forbes

In the Newcastle City Council area, individual voter registration saw 18,000 people fall off the electoral roll. A local campaign saw 11,000 sign up, but Nick Forbes, the Labour leader of Newcastle City Council, said the North East risks being sidelined.

He said: “Our region already feels bruised and battered from the last five years of the Coalition Government and it looks like the Tories boundary review could further marginalise us.

“In Newcastle, we have a growing population and yet this isn’t matched by electoral registration statistics as the voter registration system seems deliberately designed to deter people from joining the register.

“Reducing the number of MPs in the North East will work to the Tories’ electoral advantage and make it even more less likely we will have a Labour Government in 2020.”